


Unforgotten

by cofax



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Futurefic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-23
Updated: 2009-11-23
Packaged: 2017-10-03 15:51:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cofax/pseuds/cofax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He thinks occasionally that the offer from the SGC was a reward for his silence; but he doesn't mind. This is where he should be, for now.</i></p><p>Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/70322">Silenced</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unforgotten

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Tafkar.

He has been on the team for over a year, and living on Earth for close to two, before he asks her.

It's the end of one of the Colonel's infrequent bonding days: a volleyball game in the park across from her house, followed by a meal served on flimsy plates made of paper, from which the vegetables fall and the sauces dribble, staining their off-duty uniforms of t-shirts and jeans. Smay drinks too much of the Colonel's beer, and when the sun sets, Carson drags him off, one hand latched in the linguist's jacket, smiling back at her CO as she goes.

Rya'c wonders about those two, sometimes. Smay is, after all, a civilian, and the Air Force's arcane rules about sexual behavior cannot apply. But after twenty-two months on Earth he has learned enough not to ask; if they want him to know, they will tell him.

There is another question he would rather have answered. The question he originally came to Earth to ask, the one he suspects he will never get the answer to. "Security concerns, son," the old bald general had said, regretfully. After too many closed faces he had stopped asking.

Colonel Carter stands a little stiffly and stretches, one last beer bottle dangling from her fingers. Rya'c remembers: she was beautiful, once. She is still lean with muscle, and the grey in her hair is usually indiscernible. But the joyful smile he remembers, which is preserved in many photographs he has seen, has faded to a weary stretch of her lips, with only persistence behind it.

Rya'c folds his chair and puts it against the wall by the garage door with the others. When he turns around, the Colonel is leaning back to stare at the sky, where the the sunset is still fading above the pines lining her large backyard. Above them and to the east, it is dark enough to begin to see the faint stars of Earth, so few compared to Chulak. As he watches, the Colonel raises her beer above her head, as if challenging the stars, then tips the bottle to her mouth and finishes it in three long swallows.

When she drops her gaze, she starts as if only now realizing Rya'c is still there. The light from inside the house doesn't illuminate her expression, but from the angle of her head, he suspects she smiles at him.

"What happened to them?" Rya'c asks suddenly, as if this is his only chance. It might be: any other time, they would be at the SGC, the Colonel would be too guarded, someone might overhear them. But here, they are just two people, the darkness hiding her authority and the pouch scars on his abdomen.

"I can't--" she begins, and then stops. She sighs, and looks down at the empty beer bottle in her hand. "I don't really know, Rya'c. That's the problem. They went out, and -- well, they never came back."

He can't accept that. "You must know more than that." He can feel the anger building; no, it's been there all the time. But he's ready to free it.

"Not really, no." Her voice is resigned, but with a touch of warning in it. "Oh, there was a mission, and the Jaffa were involved, and the Tok'ra. I had broken my ankle, so I couldn't go. So they took my dad and they went through the gate. And that was it."

"How could that happen?" Rya'c has clung for years to the picture of his father dying honorably, surrounded by the bodies of his enemies. He cannot fathom Teal'c simply disappearing, and the universe not taking notice. Teal'c shook _empires_.

Carter shakes her head. "We never found out anything. No Goa'uld boasting that they'd taken the legendary SG-1, no rumors, no evidence, nothing. Nothing on the planet they'd gated to, nothing on any of the planets they might have gone from there."

"But--" Rya'c puts down the platter of condiments he had picked up, and sits down on the step to the kitchen door. "It's not right."

"No, it's not." She sits on the next higher step and nudges his hand with a cold bottle.

He opens it mechanically and takes a long drink. He grimaces; it's more bitter than he likes, but that seems fitting. "SG-1 is -- they sing songs of SG-1 on a thousand worlds. Tell stories of them in places where no Tau'ri has ever stepped. On Chulak we would have raised a great stone in their honor, and carved their names in it for a thousand generations to know. Why is there no memorial to their deeds?"

There's a soft clink as Carter taps the bottom of his beer bottle with hers. "You think there isn't one?" And she raises her bottle again, not to the stars this time, but to the soft summer night, echoing with the song of crickets, and dimly lit by the streetlights on the road. A car drives past the front of the house, radio playing, and Rya'c feels the rumble of the music through the stair, bass line transmitted up his spine from his tailbone.

He bows his head. "I am corrected, Tec'ma-te."

"Good man, Rya'c," she answers. They sit in the darkness until the beer is gone, drinking to the unforgotten dead.


End file.
